What. the. FUCK?!?!

Cue exploding heads (including mine) in 3...2...1...

While thousands of at-risk Americans wait, some big Wall Street banks have already secured the hard-to-find H1N1 vaccine for their employees.

NBC reports this morning that employees at the New York Stock Exchange, bankers at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, and employees at the Federal Reserve have all received swine flu vaccine doses to administer to their employees.

In particular, NBC reports that Goldman Sachs has received 200 doses of the vaccine -- the same amount as Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. Wall Street banks, like many other companies, put in requests for the vaccine but seem to have had something of a leg up on securing doses.

Comments

[montag]

When you're Masters of the Universe, you're not going to let some chump virus stand between you and raking off your percentage.

Viruses don't work on salary + bonus, and neither do the poor.

Still, how is this different than the wealthy kicking women and kids out of the Titanic's lifeboats?

[kate]

And some teabagger wingnut Social Security Medicaid Recipient is still crowing that its a good thing that in the land of the free and the brave the wealthy give to charity so much like they do and that large taxation is injustice against the poor rich and some Randian is nodding his leetle head in front of a screen in mom's basement, saying he's so glad he lives in a free economy where he can exercise his rights.

[agave]

Where I work we had a 'Flu Shot Clinic' on campus for all employees way back on September 21. Free.

I declined.

Don't see what the big deal is.

[agave]

Hey! How'd I get that geen thing?

[darkblack]

We have the same type of scandal at the moment in Canada regarding the NHL's Calgary Flames - players, staff, and family all got doses ahead of the swamped clinics after the Canadian govt. botched the vaccine rollout by amping up the fear and not having enough medicine to deal with the subsequent distribution issues.

I could play devil's advocate with this, I suppose - that uninoculated players/staff were at risk of screwing the pooch for the team season by getting sick, and perhaps the private insurance carriers for the organization and league found that an unacceptable risk - but the optics are going to shit with the reality of interminable lineups at clinics for the common folk, only to go away empty-handed.

In the Goldman Sachs case conversely, the perception is that clout counts and the little non-investor class people...don't.

;>)

[queek]

Princeton (NJ) Regional Schools where a lot of those banker's kids go to school have a dose available for every kid whereas NONE of the schools in the surrounding towns have it.

We opted out. We refuse to react to the hysteria and I don't see the medical necessity/risk for two healthy teenagers to be exposed to a live vaccine. And as my daughter so keenly put it: "there's no need to get the vaccine if everyone around you has been immunized".

[watertiger]

Coming on the heels (heh, i first typed "hells") of this story, the Goldman vaccine report reinforces the impression that these fuckers really do think they're gods.

[pansypoo]

if only there was an added soul in the doses.

[donna]

agave, this is not the standard flu shot, this is the H1N1 and it is in very short supply. That's what the "big deal" is.

[Capt. Bat Guano]

If there's a lethal batch let it be their's.

[Max]

Look Goldman Sachs are bringing some free-market magic to make a government program more efficient.

Now you can buy the vaccine directly from them: $10K per dose to credit-approved applicants, and if you act now processing fees are reduced 50%.

[Max]

Queek - I'll bet all your daughter's friends say the exact same thing!

The good news for the vaccine-paranoiacs amongst us is that the virus is it's own vaccine.

People who contract H1N1 and survive develop an immunity to the virus in exactly the same way that they would have if they'd taken the vaccine. It's a wonderful thing, the immune system!

[hokeysmokes]

hey, darkblack, the leafs got the vaccine, too.
of course, they're hoping to win the cup by being the last team alive. which is what it's going to take.

[moistenedbink]

Now, now...If any of the banksters were home sick from work for 4 or OMG 5 days the whole banking system would collapse and then where would YOU be?

Survival of the fittest you know. If they don't survive then what hope do we little people have? After all, it is our betters with money and jobs who will look after the rest of us, right? That's why they are fighting so hard on health care reform.

[darkblack]

That's true, hokeysmokes, and I heard the Sens opted out of jumping the queue. No word yet on any other Canadian teams.
Again, I can't fault a sports org for looking after assets (as it were) but all the 'You're gonna die if you don't get it!' hubbub backed with the distribution cockup gets the masses ornery.

;>)

[jane_al]

My doc just said last week that she felt that there was a "payola" thing going on with who did/who didn't get the vaccine. Guess she was correct.

[Carol]

My sister is in the ICU at a hospital in Columbus, OH. In the waiting room I talked with a woman whose sister has the H1N1. The sister was pregnant but a healthy baby boy was delivered a few weeks early. The woman is in a medically induced coma and doesn't know her baby has been born. This as been going on for at least two weeks. In the meantime, the Mother's cat and dog have both died and H1N1 is suspected. This was news to me because I didn't know pets could be infected.

[Gindy51]

"People who contract H1N1 and survive develop an immunity to the virus in exactly the same way that they would have if they'd taken the vaccine. It's a wonderful thing, the immune system!"

Yeah, tell that to the family down the road from us who lost their two young adult children to the virus in July. The young folks, 19 and 26, went to King's Island and caught the disease. The 19 year old boy died within a week while his sister, the 26 year old, lingered on a respirator for 3 weeks. It seemed like she was better but the secondary infection got her before her immune system could recover from the flu's onslaught.
I can tell you their parents would rather have had the kids get the vaccine than not.

Carol, a cat recently was diagnosed with the H1N1 flu. It recovered but was the first feline to have been tested for it. The two ferrets who caught it died.

[propecia online]

the risk of swine flu was just another poor excuse to paranoia.